Doing group projects in college sure is different than doing group projects in high school. Back then, I would do pretty much all of the work. For this project, everyone actually participated and had a say. Maybe it’s because this is college, or maybe it’s because this was a project full of other Macaulay students…probably the latter. It’s true what they say about teamwork, no matter how cliché is might be: Teamwork makes the dream work!
Working on this project exposed me to a lot of the different aspects of collaboration. Here we are, five people, with five different ideas that we somehow have to smash together to create one solid idea that can actually come to fruition. Obviously, everyone is vying for their own ideas to stay prominent, but eventually we all reach an agreement and it feels good to know that your voice is heard and that even an inkling of your presence has remained. On the other hand, ideas keep evolving and sooner or later, the original is forgotten. My group had particular special effects that we wanted to use, which we late discovered were not possible for the skill and software level we had. But the project became something that I am very proud of.
My favorite moment of the process was definitely mastering a set of lines that we kept messing up. It’s the scene where Spider has just entered and is going on and on about all of the issues with the apartment and hallway: the rats, bedbugs, infestation. We must have tried to film that scene at least fifty times, messing up in some way or another in each take. The most memorable moment was when we finally got about 95% through the scene, only for me to forget my one line! I was so upset with myself, but it was also SO funny! But finally, we did it, we finished it! As stressful as filming and memorizing lines could be, it was so much fun!
inhabited was a difficult play to memorize, mostly because there was so much interruption between lines and so many repetitive phrases. I tried to read into my character, Galvez, to see her motivations. There wasn’t much I could tell about her from her lines, only that she panics easily like I do. The best way I could think to portray her was as a worry-wart, lots of pacing and stressed-out expressions. I can’t really say that the play or any of the characters meant much to me because I didn’t form any strong connections or attachments. It’s just humorous that I get to see myself freaking out so much; at least now I know what I look like when panicking.
